Students joined assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering Dr. Shannon Roberts for a “Pizza and Prof” event at the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall to discuss human factors and performance in cars and drivers on Tuesday evening.

The Pizza and Prof events are hosted once a month by the Commonwealth Honors College. The goal of these events is to give students an opportunity to interact with professors in a more intimate setting on various topics.

Roberts is also co-director of the Human Factors and Performance Lab, which works on conducting research on drivers’ behavior and safety. During the event, Roberts explained how the research conducted strives to optimize and improve the systems that people deal with day to day. Systems are adapted to a higher quality and efficiency to optimize cars and drivers’ training to prevent automobile accidents.

One of the current research topics being done by the lab includes driving a hacked vehicle. “Another thing that people don’t realize… [is] when you have a vehicle that has a battery inside, it actually takes a lot of mini computers to make sure that battery is functioning properly,” Roberts said, explaining how any electric car could be hacked.

“On top of that, there is this little thing that is underneath your steering wheel called an OBD II port. It is On-Board Diagnostics. So when you take your car once a year to get it inspected, those guys plug in something to your car,” Roberts added. “You can put a virus into someone’s car by plugging something into that port.”

One student, Jonathan Szmyt, a senior psychology major, said, “I am [part of] a very small group of people that I use my OBD II to tune my car, and I mess with the coding and the settings and stuff. So thinking about that now, I am thinking about where I’m connected when I’m doing that onto the WiFi and how much liability I’m taking on.” Szmyt is one of the student assistants that aided in running the event.

Roberts went on to mention other research done on automated cars. There are degrees of automation, she said, but the one being examined in the research is on fully automated vehicles. The lab has research being done on taking back control of an automated vehicle that fails.

“The most surprising [thing] so far is if you are driving in an automated vehicle and it fails…people need five seconds to understand what’s happening and take back control,” Roberts said, answering a question on what the most surprising part of her research has been.

The event mentioned the implementation of automated cars on the road currently. One concern raised has been whether automated, semi-automated and manually driven cars should be sharing the road.

Roberts suggested that one solution would be a separate lane for automation; though a lack of trust in automated cars would make that difficult for now.

“A majority of people don’t trust [automated cars],” said Roberts. “So I think a lot has to change in how much we trust these systems.”

Philip Dorfman, a freshman management major, said, “I came because two of my sisters went [to UMass] and recommended coming to these events, and then I got the email and it seemed like an interesting topic.”

Victoria Ferrara-Lawlor can be reached at [email protected].